So much I took as either certain or next door to it. It was as far as I could see. And it was far enough.
I proceed to give, in an order corresponding with the numbered paragraphs above, such relevant facts as I was able to obtain about Mr. John Marlowe, from himself and other sources:
(1.) He had been Mr. Manderson’s private secretary, upon a footing of great intimacy, for nearly four years.
(2.) The two men were nearly of the same height, about five feet eleven inches; both were powerfully built and heavy in the shoulder. Marlowe, who was the younger by some twenty years, was rather slighter about the body, though Manderson was a man in good physical condition. Marlowe’s shoes (of which I examined several pairs) were roughly about one shoemaker’s size longer and broader than Manderson’s.
(3.) In the afternoon of the first day of my investigation, after arriving at the results already detailed, I sent a telegram to a personal friend, a Fellow of a college at Oxford, whom I knew to be interested in theatrical matters, in these terms:
Please wire John Marlowe’s record in connection with acting at Oxford some time past decade very urgent and confidential.
My friend replied in the following telegram, which reached me next morning (the morning of the inquest):
Marlowe was member O.U.D.S for three years and president 19— played Bardolph Cleon and Mercutio excelled in character acting and imitations in great demand at smokers was hero of some historic hoaxes.
I had been led to send the telegram which brought this very helpful answer by seeing on the mantel-shelf in Marlowe’s bedroom a photograph of himself and two others in the costume of Falstaff’s three followers, with an inscription from The Merry Wives, and by noting that it bore the imprint of an Oxford firm of photographers.
(4.) During his connection with Manderson, Marlowe had lived as one of the family. No other person, apart from the servants, had his opportunities for knowing the domestic life of the Mandersons in detail.